In the flesh
by agentTR
Summary: James Delaney has a plan and is finally going back to England after years of absence. Before reaching his home island, he makes a stop on the portuguese island of the Azores where witchcraft and explorators are common encounters.
1. Chapter 1

"Mmm ..." emitted the naked man, unconscious by the fire. A sort of hoarse complaint or grunt, she could not tell which demons might assail him in his sleep.

Raquel knew he would look for her until he found her. Rough diamonds are not mere little stones that are misplaced and forgotten. Finding them, when she was dethroning the boat that had recently arrived at Ponta Delgada, she had felt that things would not go smoothly.

When he had found her, emerging as a ghost behind her, only her reflexes had saved her, only the inside of her forearm had been cut by the curved blade of the assailant, over almost its entire length, through the leather of her garment.

Before she could disappear into the black waters by jumping overboard, when she hit him with her whole body to make him fall before he could hit again, besides his tanned skin covered with a beard and the deep scar that barred his left eye, she saw black marks on the base of his neck. They reminded her of the tribal designs of warriors and sorcerers on their body, in New Caledonia or in Africa.

She knew then that she would see him again.

He had swam at dusk until the creek the next day, guided by whatever witchcraft he might have known, and found her lair; a deep natural crevice dug into the rock over time by the tides, lined with smooth stones and sand strewn with pieces of branches that strong winds tore from the trees planted at the top of the cliff, and in which she hid with her booty after a theft a little too daring, the time to be forgotten.

It was when he was exploring the place, apparently inhabited by the still smoking embers, the clothes lying around, the containers and other jars that piled up along the walls, that she had put him to sleep, injecting him in the neck with a sting dipped into a poison of her composition, sneaking behind him under cover of the roar of a wave against the rocks.

"Mm ... Aaargh," he grumbled loudly again, wiggling his head and blinking.

The moment he remembered where he was supposed to be, he straightened, carrying his hand to the base of his neck where he had been stung, and looked around him briskly, until he set his eyes on her.

Curled up against a wall, only lit by the fire that separated them, she watched him with curiosity, her head resting against her legs, which she held back with her arms, folded against her chest. A mass of messy brown hair fell on both sides of her face, on her knees and along her bare legs. Around her ankles the skin was streaked, smoother and slightly shiny, like scars. A long, dark stain lay gently on the bottom of the gray fabric of the garment that hung from one of her arms.

"... Why am I naked?" He asked in a rocky voice, his distrustful gaze wavering between her and the wide traces of dried blood that covered his chest and thighs.

Her eyes fixed an indistinct point in front of her for a few moments. She was thinking back to those marks on his skin that she had run through with her eyes and hands, all over his body as the evening got darker, taking off the clothes that hid them and spreading the blood along the way which was oozing from her arm wound.

The face laid on his skin, she had redrawn the contours, gently passing her fingers on his chest and his belly, down on the groin, near his sex, and then on the legs, following also the motives of ink and scarifications on his arms and on his back. She still could feel the roughness of his skin and scars on her cheek, the firmness of the muscles under the flesh and then, the finer and smoother texture, as burnt, of the tattoos under the pulp of her fingers.

He smelled of sea, sand and powder. In this man, everything exhaled strength and danger, for others and for himself, just as his face, hard and marked, despite its undeniable beauty. The fire that burned beside them, casting their waving shadows on the wall, did not match the heat that emanated from him and almost consumed her if she had not voluntarily put an end to her exploration.

"I wanted to see ..." she answered in a low voice, after the shiver on her skin had gone, her face still half hidden behind her knees, "... I've never seen anyone like you." In her murmur, James Delaney perceived a foreign accent; similar to that of the Portuguese inhabiting the Azores Islands, but her phrasing was impeccable unlike the latter.

"Like me ..." he grumbled.

"A white warrior" she whispered, barely perceptible behind the crackling wood in the flames.

James stared at her for a moment, trying to guess her intentions. In appearance she looked like a fragile little thing in that position, with her low voice and her big innocent eyes, but she had managed to get the upper hand on him twice already.

"Why didn't you kill me?" he questioned, pulling his cross-legged legs and resting his arms on his knees, exposing his body without the slightest modesty.

She raised her head, revealing a slight smirk and fine smooth features, though less juvenile than he would have thought.

"You seemed to me more interesting alive ... and whole." She said, narrowing her eyes.

"Mm ... the only thing that interests me here are my diamonds." He said with fake disdain.

"There is nothing like that here, only stones ..." she said as she got up. James found that she had no other clothing than a simple shirt too big for her, which fell to her thighs and hung on her arms; his shirt.

Her tapered legs bore other marks in addition to those on her ankles, still scars but which formed a design on the top of her knees, a series of parallel lines like tribal marks engraved on the skin. She went to a pot along the wall and then, after searching inside, threw what she had just taken in the direction of James who seized it on the fly, "...and flesh."

He inspected the object; a piece of dried meat, before ostensibly throwing it into the fire.

"Give me back my things." He growled.

"All right, but before you have to fix what you did to me." She said, lifting the shirt sleeve up to her elbow, exposing the long bloody wound that was spilling over the fabric.

"Here" she added, without waiting for an answer, throwing him a small box containing wire, a small pair of scissors and a curved needle that some doctor had been imprudent enough to leave within reach during his stay. "I'd do it myself, but ... it's my bad hand," she said, waving her left hand in front of her.

"That's all I want. Then you can get what you want." She affirmed after a few seconds of silence.

She was bold, and it was impossible for him to know if she was trustworthy. But there did not seem to be any way to escape so easily from the place and she could have hidden the diamonds anywhere. He had little choice for the moment, if not to force her physically but she had aroused his curiosity, he had never crossed a white savage either.

After a few minutes staring at her suspiciously, he gave a brief grunt. According to his expression, annoyed and resigned at once, she took it for a yes. She picked up a leather bottle on the floor before coming closer and sitting cross-legged in front of him, putting their knees in contact.

Opening the container while James was busy threading through the eye of the needle with a scowl, she took a long sip before stretching her injured arm and placing it on their joined knees, shedding blood in passing, still flowing from the cut. The back of her hand brushed James' ribs that flinched slightly at the touch.

James looked up at her, his eyes narrowed as he nodded slightly, realizing how he must have been covered with blood during his unconsciousness. She replied with a smirk, ostentatiously provocative, before leaning the gourd over her arm and pouring a little on his wound.

She gave a sort of faint, taking long breaths when the clear liquid touched the open wound, diluting the blood that escaped and dripping on their legs. At the smell, James knew it was rum. "I do not propose to you, I would not want you to miss me" she said, bringing the gourd back to her mouth.

At this remark he sneered softly. "I've never reattached before, with or without rum the result will be the same, it will not be pretty."

"Do your worst, warrior, you are everything I have for now." she replied with a smile.

James grabbed her wrist and held her arm firmly against him. Lowering his face, he aimed at the end of the cut and gently inserted the needle into the flesh. He heard her hold her breath. Then he pushed the needle under the skin, forming an arc until the end came out the other side of the slot. She still did not breathe.

After that, he pulled in a slow and continuous motion, raising the needle above the arm, watching the thread progress and slowly staining inside the bloody wound, until reaching the end that he retained by a pressure of his thumb against the skin. The edges of the wound curled in line with the movement of the stretched thread, and Raquel let out a guttural throaty sigh.

James looked up at her. Her face turned to her bruised arm, her eyes scrutinizing the slightest movement that the fingers of James made; she expressed a mixture of pain and delight, biting her lower lip, her chest rising regularly to the rhythm of her deep breaths.

She seemed to enjoy more than apprehending the pain, and the feverish glare she gave him, James could not ignore the sudden contracture in his lower abdomen, feeling his cock stiffen between his legs.

"You're doing well ..." she lustfully sighed. "What is your name?"

To divert his attention, and hers, with small talk suddenly seemed to him a good idea. He might be able to shake off the idea that what they were doing was actually a kind of vicious foreplay.

"James Delaney," he replied a little hurriedly, before cutting the thread, leaving the cut edges of the skin back to their position. "What is yours?"

She watched him carefully bend the ends of the wire with the chisel to tie them over the slot, bringing the reddish edges closer to the cut until they touched and folded inward. Satisfied, she replied "Raquel Navalheiros", voluntarily pronouncing her name in Portuguese.

"You're from here?" He continued.

"No, from the mainland," she replied before drinking another swig of rum, referring to Portugal. "And you're an Englishman, aren't you? You made a long detour on the way, it seems ... " she said, pointing the marks on his chest with her head.

"Yes ... I was in Africa ..." he said, suddenly absent. "I have business to settle, back in the country." He added finally, more somberly.

"I would have guessed. The kind of pebbles that you carry around can come only from there…just like these brands, by the way."

"And how would you know that?" he retorted, suddenly slightly aggressive.

"Keep going and I'll tell you," she said slowly with a smirk, waving her arm still held firmly in his hand.

He gave her a suspicious look before settling down to plant the needle in the flesh again, less softly than the first time. This time she snatched a sonorous deep whine, but she did not blame him, still captivated by the operation he was performing, not formulating a word until he finished the knot.

Stopping a second time, James looked at her again, his erection now gone, supplanted by the mistrust she had aroused. She seemed to know too much about his whereabouts for his liking. She looked at him with a sincerely interrogative air.

"Answer and I'm going on" he ordered. She looked at him suddenly with the same delight in her eyes as when she was watching the seam on her skin.

"You know how to talk to women, James Delaney ..." she said, moistening her lips.


	2. Chapter 2

From the shore where the dead sing, her spirit never really returned. Wandering on the surface of the living without finding meaning in her life, she waited for her turn to come.

She had never felt this fullness and peace until she had reached the other side, traveling on the back of death herself, like a ship without bottom and reflection above the crystalline waves, as bright as the sun itself.

But she could not stay. It was not her time and even though she had begged her father to keep her with him on those pure white shores, he had not heard it. He was singing the names of other people and words of a language she did not know, her calls seemed to dissipate in the air like the whisper of the wind.

As light as she might have thought she was, she could still feel the weight of the thick thread that tied her to life. Her bare hands could not grasp it, let alone break it and it was in an abyss of pain and cries that she had found her body, heavy, bruised and deadly.

"Send me back there," she had said in a riot of tears and blood.

"You have not been called" had been the final sentence of the sorcerers of this distant land that had greeted her.

She had screamed and she had implored until her body was nothing more than pure agony, but the drums had gone silent and the incantations had stopped; the rite was over. Numbed by the pain and the amount of blood that had flowed from the cuts on her chest and legs, she had lost consciousness never to wake up as before.

Like them, she wanted to discover the value of life by freeing herself from the fear of death. But the latter had finally appeared to her truer and more sensible than anything she had seen in her lifetime, traveling the oceans on her father's merchant ship.

She found comfort only in the danger and suffering that gave her a glimpse of the beginning of the road, the one she would finally explore on the pale shores that she yearned to see again.

"I was a traveler, like you," she replied simply to questions from James Delaney whose suspicious look never ceased to darken.

Answer that did not satisfy him according to the hoarse grunt he made without releasing the pressure of his fingers around her wrist.

Shadows danced in his gray eyes before fading as he narrowed his eyelids imperceptibly, catching her by the neck as sharply as a snake.

"You do not want to play with me," he threatened in a hollow voice, bringing her face closer with no resistance.

He smelled of sweat and blood, his hands were covered with it. It had dried and insinuated under his nails and in all the folds of his knuckles.  
His fingers squeezed her throat and she smiled.

"It's not a game, warrior," she retorted insolently. Her only free hand on the collar of the shirt, her fingers played lightly on the buttons of the garment, one after the other. On the outskirts of his vision that never left her half-closed eyes, James followed her movements, the grim imperturbably severe.

"Look," she whispered, spreading a piece of cloth over her bare chest.

Her sparse black locks were stuck on her moist skin of sweat, between her breasts that rose slowly to the rhythm of her breaths. On each side, just beneath the collarbones, large scars formed an arc.

Lowering his eyes, other traces were revealed. Her bust was studded with whitish-white cuts and circles, but the scars were lighter than those on her upper breasts.

A hoarse and incomprehensible mumbling escaped his lips when a luminous reflection interrupted his contemplation. A familiar curved blade had just emerged in the woman's hand, worn at the level of their faces.

The ashes that covered it and the heat that emanated from it revealed to him that his own weapons had been within reach from the beginning, hidden in the sand and ashes that bordered the fire that was crackling near them. A brief grin betrayed his embarrassment. He had lacked attention.

"Finish what you started ..." she went on, her voice veiled as she swung the weapon in her hand, extending the handle towards James.  
"Bring me closer to the other side."

No incomprehension arose in his eyes, just a vague curiosity attenuated distrust and anger.

She could feel his hand holding her wrist a little harder as he gently released her neck to wrap the knife handle in her palm. She did not release it immediately. Using him as support, she sat up on her knees and slid her legs one after the other over his thighs, wrapping his pelvis, riding his lap.

"What the fuck do you want now?" he asked irritably despite the support he was unwittingly giving her, "We had an agreement."

"You broke it first" she blew on his face close to hers as she put all her weight on his thighs, her chest against his, their skins brushing in a rustle. "When you stopped stitching." Her legs fully apart against James' belly, her already wet sex was sticking against the fleece above his cock.

Releasing her arm, the wound still oozing with fresh blood, she slid the shirt behind her, along her arms, rolling her shoulders. Printing the same movement to her hips, she felt his cock slowly stiffen and come banging against her opening.

"You want me to fuck you for my diamonds now?" he asked scornfully, his face unperturbed.

"I want you to cut me. I'm sure your skills will be better used" she retorted, defying him as she gently passed her fingers over the curve of his shoulders. "You can still fuck me at the same time if it suits you."

The blade suddenly appeared under her chin and a bad pout appeared on his face.

"Give them to me or I'll cut you off for good."

A smile stretched again on her lips as she deliberately pushed her neck against the blade. The sharp edge pierced her skin and blood spurted on the blade and dripped down her neck as she bit her lip with delight.

"If only, I have tried so many times, if you only knew... but they always send me back, though I try."

"They only want what they can't have." he let out a hard voice, glancing at her with intrigued eyes as she continued to press hard on the blade before stopping abruptly, her face enlightened by a sudden revelation.

Pushing the knife over her throat as she passed, she eagerly grabbed the back of his neck with both hands. Her fingers touching the rough contours of the raven with spread wings engraved on his skin, she pressed her chest against him, her nipples hard of excitement crashing against him with each of her exalted breaths. Passing her head over his shoulder, her whole body enveloped James's in her embrace.

"You have been called, warrior ... I can take your place, offer me in exchange" she said in a breath that her urgent need made feverish, curving her bare back as a gift, virgin of traces, under the dark and obsessed gaze of James.

The breeze blowing gently in the air suddenly became insistent, annoying, to windy. Crowding into the cavity, stoking the fire, it murmured and whistled like a ghostly chant, swirling the incandescent ashes like infernal columns. The dark sky suddenly lit up above their heads, a flash of lightning revealed the swollen black clouds, charged with electricity that threatened to explode at any moment. James swore they were not there moments before. A low rumble vibrated in the air soon followed by others that resounded even in their bones. Then flashes still tore the sky, piercing the clouds and howling squalls.

The thunder became the rhythm of their hearts, pulsing in their veins with frenzied streams of blood, echoing the waves of the ocean swelling and bursting against the rocks lining the cave in a deafening noise.

There he mixed his song with that of the wind, bewitched by her embrace, her burning skin and the blows of her heart in her chest that beat like a crazy drum. His voice rolling like thunder, meaningless words left his mouth and his hand fell on her back like a cleaver.

The curved blade split her skin and she bellowed. Thousands of white-hot needles went up along her spine into her neck and spread through her muscles. The pain was intense and delicious, her limbs trembled, and her whole body tensed, hugging in a sudden spasm that of James, scratching his back with her fingers, making enter his erect cock inside her.

Entering her, he scolded his psalms from a distant land harder and his free hand guided in spite of himself her pelvis between his legs, pressing her sex offered on his.

As he cut and traced bloody furrows on her skin, his blade reddened by the thick liquid that flowed under his closed eyes, his throwing incantations addressed to the fire and the unleashed sky, she laughed and cried under the scorching onslaught of the blade in her flesh and called to the dead that they take her.

"Do you hear them, warrior?" she moaned, her eyes rolled back, her face raised to the tumultuous sky above them. In her mind paraded new sights and new sounds, dazzling and deafening, that each wave of suffering made clearer and more beautiful.

The throbbing dumps clenched her limbs, her arms, her legs around his back, her whole body was nothing more than a vice enclosing that of James, skinning him with the wires that protruded from her half-closed wound, tearing the knots. Her own brain no longer allowed her to think, to control her emotions and actions. In her, her organs suffered the same fate. Her lungs, compressed in her chest, allowed her only short, breathless bursts of air; her stomach filled with acid burned her from the inside while her contracted belly encircled the hard shaft of James whose desire grew with each thrust.

He arched her, catching her long black hair in his fist and pulling her head back as he forced himself into her. Grunting loudly, he stuck his face in the hollow of her bloody neck, smearing his cheeks and panting mouth with the liquid of metal and salt taste.

She was mumbling now, a haunting melody that rose up in waves to the rhythm of his thrusts and her panting breaths. His knife still danced slowly on her skin, the tip digging into the flesh in precise blind lines. Streams of sweat and blood flowed down her back and covered her buttocks, sliding under their curvature and mingling to the wetness of their genders that crashed wildly.

When, in unison, they shouted to some unknown gods their tumultuous prayers as waves of pleasure overflowed from their battered bodies, the sea at the edge of the cliffs burst into a monstrous crash against the rocks. Unleashed by the winds and lightning that tore the skies, the shock spread on them, and all around, thousands of fine particles of white and salt spray, consuming for good all the fires that were bruning on the shore.

The still pale rays of the sun which pointed to the horizon made his eyelids quiver. Lulled by the whispering of the waves and caressed by the weak damp breeze, he wondered for a moment what strange dreams had populated his night. It was only at the sight of his naked and sore limbs, covered with dry brown blood that almost merged with the dark marks on his skin, that he for a moment probed his memory with perplexity.

Looking around the bank, he could see a silhouette in the fine mist that covered the water's edge, beyond the rocks that surrounded the cavern. Approaching, the form became clearer.

She was sitting cross-legged on the fine sand, beaten by the translucent wavelets that ran aground before heading back to the ocean. Her smoky, wet hair, gathered and tied in disorder above her neck, was held back by a simple, light-colored wood stalk.

She was naked, like him, her skin tanned by the sun seemed almost luminous, but no trace of blood covered her anymore. Not even on the thick, clear lines of the pattern that now adorned her upper back, between her shoulder blades. A bird-shaped figure. Like his.

She leaned on her hands, arms outstretched behind her back, without turning around. There, the inside of her arm where the day before still had a long cut that he had tried to sew, the skin was almost smooth, barely marked by a long whitish line that seemed to have healed for years .

"Our time has not come, James Delaney, you took me as far as you could." She said in a clear voice, as if addressing the ocean in front of her.

"How did you heal?" he snapped dryly.

She turned her face to him and looked over her shoulder. Her large, clear eyes and sweet smile gave her face an incongruous air of innocence. She gave a childish chuckle for any answer before returning to her contemplation.

He watched her for a moment, taken aback.  
Something had changed; this creature had but little in common with the one he had possessed the day before. She was only turmoil and soiled flesh a few hours earlier, like him, but now he could see only light and appeasement. At that time, just as he had the inner conviction that she had something to do with the unleashing of the elements that had come down on them, he was also convinced that she was the one who had raised and shine the sun that morning.

"You can leave now, traveler, your precious stones are in the pocket of your shirt." She went on stretching her legs on the sand, gently slicing the crystalline ripple that approached and that emitted a lapping just beaching behind her.

His diamonds had probably been there all along, right under his eyes. He shook his head in a grumbling sound, her audacity almost making him smile.

"Come with me, Raquel, you could be of use to me." He asked almost gently, giving up his usual inflexible tone.

"By putting your mark on me, you made me your shield. You gave me purpose." she answered, standing up.

Turning towards him, shamelessly revealing her naked body, she resumed affectionately: "Since Death won't take me, you're safe. I'll wait for you here, warrior, in my own limbo." Her smile faded and her eyes became unfathomable as she added, "I'll be your ship and you'll be mine when the time comes."

Her words echoed in him as obvious, he could not explain it.

Her shattered skin twinkled for a moment as she turned back to the water. Moving forward, her entire figure was soon swallowed by fog and waves, disappearing into the ocean.


End file.
